


tomorrow, when the world is free

by thestarrystarryknight



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, in which i shamelessly push my (mostly) happy fraser family agenda, world war ii au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarrystarryknight/pseuds/thestarrystarryknight
Summary: In 1943, Claire Fraser takes in a French orphan named Claudel, who lost his home, family, and all but his name when his village was bombed a year earlier. With her husband away fighting in Italy, Claire does the best she can to maintain some semblance of a home and family for the small child even as everything she holds dear is upended by the war. A modern(ish) au, about life, love, and family during wartime.
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp & Fergus Fraser, Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser
Comments: 18
Kudos: 87





	1. August 19, 1943

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all! this is my first time writing fic - not sure if something like this has already been done, but, i hope you enjoy my take on our favorite frasers in wwii!

August 19, 1943 

Tunisia 

My Claire,

I dreamt last night of harvest-time at Lallybroch. Perhaps that will tell you something of my life these days; I find myself yearning for those long, back-breaking hours working in the fields, mending this and that round the estate, bone-tired at the end of the day -- and you, of course, above all else.

What I wouldn’t give, mo chridhe, to hold you in my arms this night, to hear your laugh.

I dream so often of the years we had together before I left, and I expect I will each night till I’m sent marching home to you. Yet as desperately as I miss you, Claire, I cannot regret my choice to go into the service, much as I may complain. The fight I’ve chosen is a worthy one. I can’t see how I could be the kind of man my father raised me to be -- the kind of man who is worthy of you -- while choosing to stay home, safe, as friends and brothers give themselves freely in sacrifice.

You know as well as I do the high cost of war -- you have seen the truth of it in your hospital, gone toe-to-toe with Death himself, with not a weapon to wield, save your wee bandages. Even still, I will ask your forgiveness today, as I do every day, for having left you, even for such a cause as this. To come home to you, Claire, is all I dream of in the nighttime, all that keeps me fighting in the day.

I’ll ask you this now, mo nighean donn, and you’ll not hear another word from me on the subject once you give your answer: do you plan to volunteer as a nurse once more? I ken well that you’ll have made up your mind one way or another by now - do not think that just because we are apart I have stopped knowing the way of you.

Know that I am proud of you and your courageous heart whichever path you choose to take.

It’s getting late and I must go now and sleep -- I’ll write again soon as I have the time.

I love you.

Your husband,

Jamie


	2. Claire & Claudel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe there was no grand plan, she thought, no invisible orchestrations leading the boy to her front steps. Maybe there was just the fact that she was so very alone, just then, with so much love to give. Maybe it was just one moment, a crossing of their paths by chance. Maybe that was enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hello it's me, i promise i'm alive and i didn't abandon this story. college + life in general has left me a bit drained the last few months. i'm hoping to catch up on some writing over winter break and post a ~bit~ more regularly than i have been lol. anyway this is a (mostly) unedited/unbeta'd mess but i'm quite proud of it. thank you to everyone who read and commented on this story so far -- it really does mean so much to me.  
> (also, i added a bit more to this chapter, so i edited and reposted it in case anyone was confused haha. anyway. here 'tis.)

The boy had nothing, she had been told, save his name. No home; no family history; no ties to bind nor memories to sustain him. It was the only thing about him that anyone could be absolutely certain of; everything else was little more than speculation conjured up from the rubble and soot he’d been found in six months prior. 

Claire would never fully understand the series of events that led to her assuming the care of Claudel - the harried phone calls and hastily signed documents, a kindly priest two villages over, a sour-looking social worker who had come to ensure the boy’s safe arrival. Many years later, she would try to trace the chain of charities and churches and military officials, to piece together a timeline and a coherent narrative, something to be able to give the child, when he was old enough to understand the depth of his loss. She would come close, with a question mark or two remaining, places where she could only say that the fates conspired, the stars aligned, the Lord worked a miracle, whichever one he chose to believe in. 

What would she tell him of his history, when he asked? 

You were the son of a soldier and a schoolteacher. You had a brother and a sister, both older. 

You lived in a small village on the outskirts of Lyon. Your home was reduced to ashes in minutes. They found you wandering on the road the next morning. 

You knew your name, and nothing else. 

Your parents were so brave. 

I loved you from the moment I saw you. From the moment I heard your name.

Maybe there was no grand plan, she thought, no invisible orchestrations leading the boy to her front steps. Maybe there was just the fact that she was so very alone, just then, with so much love to give. Maybe it was just one moment, a crossing of their paths by chance. Maybe that was enough. 

Maybe it all came down to a particularly rainy afternoon late in August, when Claire stood in the archway outside her home, dressed in a sensible skirt and blouse, watching a dusty black car wind its way up the road to Lallybroch.

The car stopped several metres away from her, and out stepped the same stern-looking woman Claire had met with just a week before in Inverness. The woman inclined her head in a brief greeting before turning back to the car and opening the door. Claire couldn’t see past her, the overlarge handbag she carried obscuring what small glimpse she might have had of the other passenger in the car. A few brief words were exchanged in French, and then the woman stepped aside. 

The boy was startlingly familiar. If she hadn’t known better she might have thought he was her own blood: with his dark head of curls, and the bright, clear blue of his eyes, it was like staring at the mingling of her own genetics with her husband’s. The thought was accompanied by a familiar stab of hurt and she thought -- as she so often did -- of the little gravestone, much newer than its neighbors, in the family cemetery at the edge of the estate. 

What  _ would _ Jamie think, she wondered, when he heard of this newest addition to their family? He would read her news and perhaps wonder if his wife wasn’t lost in some grief-stricken delusion, in a world where things were fair. A world where she rocked her child to sleep each night, instead of holding her tiny body only once, placing a tear-stained kiss to the beautiful little nose, cold as the marble marker bearing their daughter’s name.

_ Get it together, Beauchamp _ , she thought sternly. 

“Mrs. Fraser,” the social worker finally said, giving her a once-over before turning her gaze toward the house. “Might we take Claudel, here, inside and get him settled? We’ve some things to discuss before I take my leave.”

#

A storm rolled in, slow and lazy, just the social worker climbed into her car and the engine roared to life. It would be a long drive back to Inverness, Claire thought absently, staring out at the place where the road turned, and the car disappeared from her vision round the bend.

Her heart thrummed wildly, and she pulled the front door closed gently, turning and starting up the staircase. Claudel was upstairs just now, in the little corner bedroom that faced the gardens. After the social worker -- Donna Campbell, as she had introduced herself quite primly -- had left, Claire had asked, a bit awkwardly, “Would you like to see your room?” And the boy had nodded, wordlessly, clasping the handle on his little carpetbag so tightly his knuckles had begun to whiten. She had left him there in the bedroom, hoping to give him a moment or two to himself, and, she supposed, to give herself time to try and think of what, exactly, she was to do now. 

It was one thing to say you would raise a child. Quite another to actually  _ do _ the raising, to make space in your life for another person who would be wholly dependent on your care. For one brief, manic moment, Claire thought,  _ There’s been a terrible mistake _ . Not on her part; no. She wouldn’t take back a single second of the whirlwind of the last few months. For as long as she lived, she would never regret a moment of her time given to the child. 

No, the mistake had been on the part of whatever governmental entity had given a stamp of approval to Claire’s cockamamie plan to raise a child. On paper she was perfectly suitable, the very image of maternal respectability: married to an officer in the Royal Air Force, a licensed nurse who had done her bit to help the war effort, perfectly capable of taking care of herself and a household and, one might presume, a child as well. But life is more than paper. Some fears -- the sort that lurk in the back of one’s mind in the early dawn hours -- could not be put to words. 

Not for the first time in recent months, she wished Jamie were here, struck with a sudden vision of him running wild through the ancient halls of Lallybroch, playing hide-and-go-seek in the upstairs bedrooms, getting into all sorts of mischief with Claudel. It wouldn’t be perfect, she reasoned with herself: his temper would likely get the best of him every now and then, and he’d likely spoil the child absolutely rotten, with little gifts and treats and surprises accompanied by a  _ Don’t tell yer mam, aye? _ and a flash of that irresistible grin that had won her over too many times to count. 

The man’s heart was too big, and his arms were meant to hold a family. He was  _ good _ with children, her Jamie, and always had been.

One night, some two or three months after they met, he’d asked her what, exactly, they were to each other. He’d said it almost in passing, light enough it might be played off as a joke if he’d been mistaken, but with a characteristic earnestness that left her with little doubt as to what his stance on the matter was. Her answer had come in the form of one long, enthusiastic kiss that turned the tips of his ears pink and left her giddy and weightless as she whispered,  _ I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, Fraser _ , and he replied,  _ That isna something to be afraid of _ . 

Not long after that conversation they’d gone to Jenny and Ian’s for dinner one Sunday, cementing Claire's place in his life, and his in her own. They hardly made it to the front door of the house before two extraordinarily excited children had come barreling down the path and into their uncle’s arms. The whole evening she’d watched him with them, little Jamie and Maggie, and tried to place the feeling brought on by the sight of them together. Later, calling out goodbyes to his family and stepping out, hand-in-hand, into the bracing evening cold, Claire managed to identify it as hope, unmarred by practicality and boundless, it seemed, at the realization that they had an entire life’s worth of things to hope for.

A home of their own. Holidays beside the sea, in France or Italy or Spain, or maybe just in Brighton. A cherry-red, wholly impractical Aston-Martin, or perhaps something more sensible, something more suited to a family. That, alone, she had taken as a given; whatever other permutations of their life she had imagined were built atop the idea that there would be a need for many rooms in a large, roomy home, that some degree of sensibility was required in planning for the future, because it wouldn’t be just the two of them they were planning for. 

She had breathed those expectations into the small room just down the hall from her own, the one with a small bassinet and a rocking chair and the knitting she’d tried to take up, the christening gown and tartan and assortment of toys that had belonged to Jamie, and to his parents before him. There, the jagged-edged cynicism that sometimes swept over her and the hope she had nurtured for three long years of separation somehow coexisted. 

She thought of their early days more and more, she found, as the war dragged on. Their framed photographs taunted her and the ghosts of their younger selves seemed to haunt her everywhere in Lallybroch. 

The grandfather clock in the library began to chime, and Claire tore herself away from the window, and her own morose thoughts. The heels of her shoes clicked against the old floors as she crossed the room quickly, arms wrapped round her middle.  _ He’ll be home soon enough _ , she thought. Jamie had promised her that much: in his slanting, spidery letters written during a rare moment of peace; in the dreams they’d shared in whispers and gentle touches in the pale light of daybreak; in that last, desperate kiss on the train platform,  _ I love you _ whispered against her lips, and shouted once more from the window on the train as it began to move. 

There was no use dwelling on what had passed, she told herself resolutely, nor on what might or might not come to be. All she could do -- all anyone could do, these days -- was hold on to the paper-thin sense of peace that lived in the small, ordinary moments.

And besides: it wasn’t just her, anymore. It would never be  _ just _ her again. There was Claudel to think of, now, whatever may happen in her future. She paused as she passed the library, and ducked inside. A great deal of the books there were in Gaelic, or else in Latin or French, which she supposed might bring some comfort. Her eyes settled on a stout collection of fairytales she had seen a time or two before, and she pulled it off the shelf, tucking it under her arm as she walked upstairs. 

She found Claudel sitting on the very edge of his bed when she knocked on the half-open door, his knees drawn up to his chest. He looked much younger than his ten years, she thought, studying him in the dim light. 

“Can I come in?” She asked. 

There was a beat of silence, and then he said, quietly, “Yes,” and she crossed the room, and sat down on the bed beside him. 

Claire held out the book a bit awkwardly. “I…thought you might like a bedtime story,” she offered, somehow utterly terrified of having wildly misjudged her new charge. But the boy nodded, a bit shyly, and unfurled his arms and legs. 

She cleared her throat. “Alright, then,” she said, and opened the book. 


End file.
